A Fascinating Sign That You Have A High IQ

Posted on December 4, 2017

Photo: pexels

A study published in the Journal of Neuroscience by the pianist and neuroscientist, Professor Fredrik Ullén, discovers that people with higher IQ's find keeping time an easier task. However, not to be confused with being musical, keeping time here refers to just the simple ability to tap out a regular rhythm.

Good timing seems to be built in at a fundamental level to the brains of more intelligent people. Professor Ullén wrote that: "It's interesting as the task didn't involve any kind of problem solving. Irregularity of timing probably arises at a more fundamental biological level owing to a kind of noise in brain activity."

Participants in the study were just asked to maintain a regular beat with a drum stick on a drum pad. For the initial 20 beats, they were asked to copy the clicking of a metronome. And for a further 45 beats, they had to keep the rhythm without assistance. Results from the study showed that "...intelligence is related to millisecond accuracy in isochronous [regular] tapping". The Professor says the link suggests that millisecond timing accuracy in the brain is important when it comes to problem-solving ability: "We know that accuracy at millisecond level in neuronal activity is critical to information processing and learning processes."

The brain scans also showed a link between a higher intelligence, the ability to keep time and more white matter in parts of the brain that is linked to planning, problem solving and managing time. As quoted by Ullén: "All in all, this suggests that a factor of what we call intelligence has a biological basis in the number of nerve fibres in the prefrontal lobe and the stability of neuronal activity that this provides."

Relative to this, people with high intelligence are also shown to have quicker reaction times.


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Source material from PsyBlog